Tag: short story

However hard she tried to forget the atrocities she had seen during her childhood. During the warfare in her country of birth.

The streaming blood, the grey and cold limbs covered in dust. Where always there. Haunting her.

She rearranged the flowers. It didn’t help. Fresh roses had been placed on graves. Now, she was trying to sell them. This job she had hoped would not trigger the memories.

The sirens sounded. Terrible images came over her. She wanted to hide, but hiding during the exam was not an option. Here she was safe. Still inside she panicked. The clock indicated that it was noon, the first Wednesday of the month. Every month she started to panic, over and over again.

In the café, the TV was on with the news. She stepped back in horror. Those images felt like the ones she had witnessed without the protective layers of journalism and screens in-between.

She sat down at the kitchen table. Crying, shivering, shaking. She couldn’t lift the fork to her mouth. This time it wasn’t the food, for it was her husband’s cooking. It was the neighbours fighting, yelling for the whole world to hear, slamming doors and breaking plates that took her back to the past.

She had to live with her fears, her memories, always. Everything could trigger the darkest things she had seen to come back. It was raw, even years later. It was omnipresent in her life.

“We want to see the new king!”
“We want to see our new king!”
“We want to see the new king of our country!”

The crowds outside were deafening. The new king didn’t want to show his face, he wanted to sleep. To sleep of the grief, the shock, the excess alcohol he had ingested in the past few hours. As he was a teetotaler this was especially tough for him.

“Sir” his new household member, a royal butler approached the new king.
“Oh don’t call me sir, I am as much a Sir as you are. ” Keith replied, trying to ignore his throbbing head. “Actually, you are much more of a sir than I am”.

“Where is the king?”
“We want to see the new king!”

“Are you sure that this isn’t a terrible mistake?” Keith looked at his butler. “Isn’t this some fake-news gone terribly wrong?”

“No, Sir, erm Keith” his butler muttered, “everyone seems to be dead and you are the next one in line to the throne”.

“It is a complot!” Keith started to plead, he wasn’t ready to be king. He hadn’t figured out what he wanted to do in his life, but it wasn’t being a monarch, that was sure.

“Well no. Do you remember anything of last night?”

“I just remember that I was crowned” Keith trailed off, this really seemed as unlikely as anything. Hadn’t he been the son of a single mom? Okay, it was true that somehow she worked little and they always had enough money, more than most of his friends, and that without rich grandparents.

“Your father was very close to the throne, and even though he never married your mother, he tried to keep an eye on her, and he made sure that you were known to his solicitor and present in his will. It turns out that you bypassed all of your siblings as your mom has more blue blood than was initially known, and your siblings aren’t known for their best behaviour. So out you go now, wave at them!”

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